1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing system, and an information processing method that are applied to a system or an apparatus in which, for example, an image input apparatus, such as a digital camera or the like, and a host information processing apparatus are connected to each other so as to be able to perform communication, and image data and the like are transmitted/received between these apparatuses, and to a storage medium which stores processing steps for executing the above-described operations, so as to be readable by a computer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, for example, in a system in which an image input apparatus, such as a digital still camera or the like, and a host information processing apparatus, such as a personal computer (hereinafter abbreviated as a “PC”) or the like, are connected to each other, in general, image data obtained by the image input apparatus (image data obtained by a photographing operation, and the like) is temporarily stored in a storage medium provided in the image input apparatus, and is then transferred to a storage medium provided in the host information processing apparatus. This is because the unit price per bit of a storage medium provided in the image input apparatus is higher than that of a nonvolatile large-capacity storage medium, such as a hard disk or the like, provided in the host information processing apparatus.
In the above-described conventional system, however, in order to transfer image data obtained by the image input apparatus to a specific directory in a file structure managed by the host information processing apparatus, the user must assign a directory to which the image data is to be transferred, by performing a predetermined operation in the host information processing apparatus, after providing a state of allowing communication by connecting the image input apparatus to the host information processing apparatus using a serial cable or the like.
For that purpose, the user must perform very troublesome operations for photographing an image, transferring image data, and the like while moving between the image input apparatus and the host information processing apparatus. Furthermore, for a user who does not know well how to deal with the host information processing apparatus, for example, it is very difficult to perform an operation for assigning a directory to which the image data is to be transferred.